Audiotex personal ad services are a popular way for people to meet, and are available in most newspapers and on many cable television systems. In a typical service, an advertiser calls a live operator and places a text personal ad. An advertiser then calls an audiotex system and records an audio message, often referred to as a greeting, which expands upon the advertiser's text ad by describing in more detail the advertiser and the type of person he is seeking. Personal ads are then published in a newspaper. A personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser'voice greeting. A caller can respond to an ad by recording a reply voice mail message for the advertiser. An advertiser retrieves a message by calling the audiotex system and entering a password given at the time of ad placement. In another format, no live operator is used. An advertiser first records an audio greeting. An operator then listens to the audio greetings off-line and writes a text summary of each audio greeting for publication in the newspaper.
With the expansion of the Internet and other on-line services, personal ad services have been created to take advantage of this new medium. A typical service allows an advertiser to place a text personal ad that is published on the Internet on an HTML (HyperTest Markup Language) page. An Internet user may respond to a personal ad by sending an advertiser a message via electronic mail. The limitation of this approach is that an Internet user cannot listen to an audio recording of an advertiser, a feature that is central to audiotex personal ad services. Another limitation is that most people do not have Internet access, thus limiting the number of advertisers and respondents.
In another format, an attempt is made to integrate audiotex personal ads services with the Internet. Using this approach, a newspaper publishes personal ads in both the newspaper and on the Internet. Each personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser's voice greeting. This approach still has the disadvantage of not allowing an Internet user to listen to an advertiser'voice greeting via the Internet. Moreover, an Internet user can only respond to a personal ad via a telephone.
As the use of audiotex services has grown steadily, related telephonic communication techniques have also expanded. In that regard, telephone systems have been developed that permit telephone callers to exchange telephone messages. At the same time, the Internet has made possible the interaction of large numbers of personal computers. Thus, on the one hand, the public telephone network exists as a principal means of voice communication, while the Internet is the major large scale choice for sharing digital data.
To date, both the public telephone network and the Internet have been used for both the sharing of voice files and data files. For example, placing telephone calls via the Internet is possible, while data files are often transferred via the public telephone network. Indeed, most people use the public telephone network to access the Internet. However, a system that optimizes the interaction between the public telephone network and the Internet is elusive. For example, in the voice personals industry, service bureaus provide "800" and "900" numbers for callers to access stored voice files, for exchanging information so that matches can be made, and hence, people can date one another. In that industry, service bureaus often use voice boards, such as those provided by Dialogic Corporation, to answer telephone calls, store and access voice files, and match callers with other voice messages.
Conversely, among Internet users, text messages are stored on a database, and then, users enter various web sites to access messages on diverse so-called bulletin boards or databases. In essence, abstracts of databases can be searched so that users can look for interesting sites to browse.
However, to date, there has not been a seamless database interface constructed that allows telephone users of audiotex systems to access Internet messages, and allows Internet users to access audiotex services.
Accordingly, it is desirable to increase the intelligence of a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to increase the flexibility in a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to provide greater interaction between a caller and a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to provide greater accessibility to information from external systems by a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to augment the existing process of directing calls to service agents. It is also desirable to route a caller to the appropriate agent based on information about the caller. It is also desirable to provide routing of a call and its associated data to the appropriate agent. It is also desirable to provide network reliability in routing a caller to the appropriate agent.
Multi-media messaging involves integrating discrete messages or individual message components of different media, e.g., voice, text, video, and the ability to deliver the integrated messages through a single universal mailbox. For example, the integration of voice and facsimile (fax) messages is well known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,926, discloses an integrated voice-and-facsimile store-and-forward message system that provides for the sending, storage, and delivery of voice messages, fax messages, fax messages annotated with voice messages, and voice messages annotated with fax messages. The disclosed system additionally provides for display of fax messages on terminal screens, and the conversion of fax printed text messages into voice messages via text-to-speech conversion facilities.
Electronic mail, or e-mail, systems are also well known in the art. They provide for the sending, storage, and delivery between computer terminals of displayable data-text and/or graphics-messages.
Integration of e-mail systems with voice-and-fax message systems is highly desirable. For example, it is becoming common for salesmen to work out of "mobile offices"--their cars--which are equipped normally with telephones, often with fax machines, but generally not with data terminals, yet the salesmen would like to have the capability of receiving in their mobile offices messages sent to them in any form--voice, fax, or e-mail. The integration of fax and e-mail messaging is readily accomplished through conversion of e-mail messages into fax messages for delivery to their recipients. But while fax machines are more likely to be available to mobile recipients of the messages than data terminals, they are not as readily available as telephones. Therefore, it is often preferable to instead accomplish the integration of voice and e-mail messaging through conversion of e-mail messages into voice messages for delivery to their recipients. This type of conversion is also readily accomplished if the e-mail messages constitute text only.
A problem arises, however, when e-mail messages constitute information other than text--such as diagrams, charts, special symbols, computer code fragments, pictures, et.--which is not suitable for conversion into a voice message. Attempts to convert such data message segments into speech result in unintelligible garble. This may be avoided by simply identifying and discarding the non-voiceable data message segments, but this results in the delivery of an incomplete message to the recipient--an unacceptable result.
To summarize, existing Internet personal ad services are limited in that they lack many of the features available on audiotex personal ad services. Also, existing personal ad services do not provide a means for those using a audiotex personal ad service to effectively communicate with those using an Internet personal ad service and visa versa. Although some attempts have been made to improve and integrate existing services, all personal ad services heretofore known suffer from a number of disadvantages:
(a) Existing systems do not allow an Internet user via a computer connected to the Internet to listen to an audio greeting from an audiotex personal ad service. PA1 (b) Existing systems do not allow an Internet user to record an audio greeting via a computer connected to the Internet that can be listened to by other Internet users via the Internet. PA1 (c) Existing services do not allow an advertisers to record an audio greeting via a computer connected to the Internet that can be listened to from a telephone. PA1 (d) Existing services do not allow an advertiser to place a personal ad on an audiotex personal ad service and receive a message on the Internet via electronic mail. PA1 (e) Existing services do not allow a telephone caller to access a text personal ad placed on the Internet. PA1 (f) Existing services to not allow an Internet advertiser to receive a response message from a telephone caller. PA1 (g) Existing services do not allow a telephone caller to retrieve a text message left in response to her personal ad. PA1 (h) Existing services do not allow a telephone caller to retrieve audio messages left in response to her personal ad where said audio responses are left via a computer connected to the Internet. PA1 (i) Existing personal ad services that publish personal ads in a newspaper or on a cable television show limit the number of words of a text personal ad. PA1 (a) to allow an Internet user via a computer connected to the Internet to listen to an audio greeting from a audiotex personal ad system. This invention uses compression and data streaming to allow an Internet user to listen to an audio file without downloading. An audio file begins playing while it is being transferred. The advantage is audio that begins playing in real time. PA1 (b) to allow an Internet user to record an audio greeting via a computer connected to the Internet that can be listened to by other Internet users via the Internet. PA1 (c) to allow an advertiser to record an audio greeting via a computer connected to the Internet that can be listened to from a telephone. PA1 (d) to allow an advertiser to place a personal ad via a telephone and receive a message on the Internet via electronic mail. PA1 (e) to allow a telephone caller to access a text personal ad placed on the Internet using text-to-speech whereby a computer uses a synthesized voice to speak text over a telephone. PA1 (f) to allow a telephone caller to respond to a personal ad that is placed via the Internet, where said response can be retrieved via the Internet. PA1 (g) to allow a telephone caller to retrieve a text message left in response to her personal ad by an Internet user by using text-to-speech whereby a computer uses a synthesized voice to speak text over a telephone. PA1 (H) to allow a telephone caller to retrieve an audio message left in response to her personal ad where said audio response is left via a computer connected to the Internet. PA1 (i) to allow an advertiser to have virtually no limit on the number of words in his text personal ad by publishing personal ads on the Internet.
In the use of such services, the need is recognized for improved capability regarding the features available to Internet users, and the integration of audiotex personal ad services and Internet personal ad services.